Amongst  the Vagrants and Hidden by the Snow
by Shinsei Tonbo
Summary: Suggested Drug Use. DI Lestrade is just starting out when they send him undercover and he meets the most infuriating and brilliant kid, stung out and on the streets though he may be.


The first time Geoff Lestrade met Sherlock, he was young, just starting out as a Detective Inspector and under a veteran to the job and had passed him off as just another homeless teen fallen to the drug scene that flourished in the underbelly of London.

The second time was much the same, glancing over him and not really thinking much about the poor soul who had fallen so deeply.

The third time, Geoff was undercover and trying to find the source of said drugs, acting as one of the homeless himself.

He had several days' dirt, grime, and scruff to hide his identity. His clothes unwashed and rank, smelling of the places he's had to sleep in and the various filth he's had to walk through to appear transient. He carried a flask filled with rain water from the other night, wary and too disgusted to even think about drinking from the Thames or any of the various other places he's seen people drink from in the few days he's been there.

He shuffled over to a vacant corner in one of the many dilapidated building that had been condemned but had yet to be either torn down or fixed up by their owners. There were several squatters, but just like before he just glanced over them, not really taking in the identities of the people around him. Most of them, from his observations, weren't addicts or users, just people down on their luck or lifelong vagrants.

Later he blames how startled he was being called by name, in the middle of an undercover op. no less, on such little sleep over the time he'd spent living the life of society's outcast.

He looks at the pale faced drug addict and meets surprisingly lucid eyes. His face is gaunt and his eyes sunken into his head, there are sores on his fingers from picking at them from the jittery after effects of the drug leaving his system, his hair is long, mangy, and greasy—he can't really believe this young man is destroying himself at such an age. Lestrade can see track marks on his forearms and almost dismisses what he heard as paranoia but the kid speaks again.

"The newly minted DI Lestrade, I see you've been slumming it, I believe the term is. Now the only reason for such a model citizen of the Queen's good country to be doing that is if she had but asked. Now the question is why did she ask?"

Geoff Lestrade is so taken aback by the blasé attitude, the matter of fact apathetic certain tone, in which the observation is delivered that he just stares dumbstruck at the kid in front of him for a good minute before he comes to his senses. He grabs him and pulls him into a room that is shrouded in darkness and dust, making sure the other occupants of the floor are all unaware of this little altercation.

Geoff hisses at him, angry that his cover has been blown and he's done all of this for nothing, on his first assignment, "How did you know my name?"

Sherlock shrugs at him and grins eyes alight with manic glee, "Simple, I've met, or at least seen you before with DI Hardison. Your current dress does little to disguise you from those truly observant."

Geoff can't help but stare at him before growling lowly in his throat, "You mean to tell me they sent me here, knowing that I'm not blending in? Those-those—"

"You are blending in fine you oblivious ingrate, you look just like the rest of the homeless population inhabiting this city," Geoff really wanted to beat in the skull of this impudent young man as he rolled his eyes at him. "Then again most of you are absolutely blind to the things around you, pity I had hoped that you were different than the rest over at the Met."

Then like a ghostly mist he slips through Geoff's grasp and he seems to almost disappear into the shadows around him before that roughly aristocratic voice seems to give him the answers he needs.

"The main suppliers move their product through the wharf."

Then the young man is gone, it isn't until months later that he meets him again, both of them suitably cleaned up.

He had a feeling Sherlock Holmes would be in his life for a long time to come, and he hasn't managed to get rid of him yet.


End file.
